


Eleven

by heavensweetheart



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Eleven Minutes, F/M, Inspired by Novel, Inspired by..., Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, POV First Person, Paulo Coelho, Philosophy, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavensweetheart/pseuds/heavensweetheart
Summary: “Relax,” I say. “We are just going to touch.”
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Kudos: 27





	Eleven

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired by a scene from the book Eleven Minutes by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. It's scene were the female protagonist meets with her lover to perform exactly this encounter. I always wanted to write this! 😅

**Katara**

The house in Ember Island was in ruins; the first time we went there.

It was another product of war. Or even worse, a product of oblivion. Of cruelty.

There was heartlessness in forgetting because it meant taking away a love you promised and delivered.

It used to remind me of the Fire Nation. Now I know it was only reminiscing of the world in general.

People and places are forgotten and abandoned all the time. The Southern Water Tribe, Hama, Jet, nameless soldiers who we sank into the water and who never returned to the surface.

Against all odds, I don’t feel guilty about them, but I don’t feel avenging either. Maybe just justified, even if it’s only by a stretch or a technicity. I can say I was defending myself – more importantly, that I was defending others – but the result is the same: someone lived and someone died. It’s not taboo, it’s just reality.

I think about the ocean. Dark, cold, unforgiving, beautiful even carrying its ruthless strength.

I think about Ember Island's house once more, as it is now. Vibrant, elegant, homey, glowing for the pieces of soul we provided to it.

That’s why I didn’t want to do this there, it has been too altered by humans. Us, the servants, the contractors that remodeled it. I wanted to do this somewhere raw. Somewhere hidden and perhaps just a share of forgotten as the house was then.

I picked a place at the South Pole, away from the villages, both old and new. Somewhere afar where nobody knew us. Somewhere into the night.

The dark non-light trespasses the fabric walls of the tent, it looks like we were trapped into the Aurora Australis – a light that somehow, in some way, comes expressly from the darkness.

“Katara?”

I turn to Zuko.

I can see the contour of his naked body. Makes me acutely aware of my nudity, too.

“Sorry,” I say, serenely walking up to him in a corner of the tent. (I’m barefooted, the two of us are.) My feet dig in the snow. “Zoned out.”

His eyes glow in the soft dimness as he stares at me.

For many, it would seem strange the way he makes so much effort in keeping his gaze from deviating anywhere from my face, my eyes. _If I’m already naked in front of him, it’s because I already agreed to the whole thing, right?_ Zuko doesn’t think that way. He’s not the best with words, that’s no secret, but he makes it up with actions and gestures, as small as they might appear.

_I see you._

_I see you and I respect you._

His eyes run away, embarrassed. “I don’t really know how…”

“Relax,” I say. “We are just going to touch.”

Exactly two seconds pass before he nods; it’s soft and still hesitant. A flash of memory bolts before my eyes and Zuko turns into that fragile teenager with bright and hopeful yet lost eyes. When I blink again, he and I return to the people who we are now. He’s grown, and stronger, and more serious, but peculiarly more laid-back, and… beautiful.

Godlike.

“I just want to show you something.”

I help him put on his blindfold.

“You really don’t mind this?”

“I trust you,” his voice is solid air.

His skin is hot, so hot it sends a shiver from my hands to all the rest of my limps, the tiny hairs on my arms stand up. A thrill and a distinct kind of hunger tickle inside my stomach. I stare at his terse, vulnerable fair skin – his broad, muscled back. It physically hurts to restrain me from letting myself fall against it.

 _We are just going to touch._ But this feels good, too. The restriction and proximity, the aching to touch.

I put on my own blindfold, take his hand to walk to the center of the unoccupied tent.

Walking barefoot over the snow is uncomfortable even for me; the cold stings like thousands of little, thin but sharp needles together. It’s not unwelcome though, it makes me feel closer to this part of the world that is my home.

We kneel in front of one another. Closely. Our knees brush together.

I shiver again.

 _I love Zuko_.

The words repeat themselves inside my head over and over. _I love Zuko, I love Zuko, I love Zuko_.

The more I recite them, the freer I feel. Loving him is not what makes me free, freedom is something that we give ourselves by letting us grow and sense. I love him _because_ I am free. Because I want to and I have the power to do so. Even if he didn’t love me back, I could still love him on my own. It would be my choice, mine and mine alone. I would choose him for who he is, and for who I am. Him, this, this feeling, is what I – my core; my inner, truer self; a version of me made only by water and dust and moonshine – wants.

I wanted to show him that freedom, wanted him to feel it himself.

I find his hand surprisingly easy, pass my fingers over his palm, it tickles us both.

Further down, I draw the lines carved in his wrist and then the slightest bulged veins and tendons, thanking Spirits for his blood flowing, for his life. His other hand comes to my shoulder. I don’t flinch at the contact, I was expecting it. It is wanted.

The tip of his fingers curves through the outline of my shoulder and down my arm, delineating it. They glide back up, climbing higher, passing through the curve of my neck, the corner of my jaw, and floating over my cheek. His tact is feathery, his hand smells like ashes.

My hand ascends his arm, my fingers dip in the arches of his muscles. The sole sensation is already arousing me. We have plenty of time, all the time in the world, to do exactly this. I have all the time in the world to touch Zuko, be with Zuko, and it feels thrilling. He has all the time in the world to touch me, be with me, and it feels lovely. We aren’t necessarily going to have sex, it doesn’t have to be that way, just touching. Touching and sharing.

The heat between my legs grows. 

It grows and throbs when both my hands go up to the sides of his jaw and his go down to caress my breasts. My breath becomes heated. Open, rough, and soft palms move smoothly through my chest, purposely and frustratingly avoiding my nipples, down the outer curvature of my boobs. His breath is heated as well.

His hands linger in their place, I wish for them to move, and then for them not to move. This feels nice, and patient, even if our panting sounds anxious; it’s another choice. He wants this, to touch me there. Just like I want to continue touching him down his thick throat, to his hard pecs. His skin is warming up. I finally reach for the rugged skin at his sternum and he makes a sound that is oddly not a moan but equally pained and longing.

I can’t tell if the small spark I feel when touching his chest scar is real, or just a product of my imagination. Maybe it’s a trick of my memory.

I can’t recall if the small bits of electricity floating around that day at the Agni Kai chamber were real either, I don’t know if they were traces of Azula’s sprinkled lightning, I just remember blinding light, unfeeling water, and stinging fear. The ghost of that day flies between us, and Zuko’s hands hold on to the sides of my ribcage, almost desperate, nearly embracing me.

I want to tell him it is okay, that I am here and will never go, but I don’t. I show him instead. My palm spreads over his scar.

It is better this way, for both him and me; I get to feel his heartbeat increase its rhythm together with mine when his hands finally cup my breasts.

The heat intensifies and becomes wet, too; tingle courses through all my legs and belly. My nipples are hard when Zuko starts to twist them softly, tentatively; making me wetter. I want to moan, but I feel that if I did, it would break the state of inexistence that we are in now. It would make it too carnal, it’s supposed to be beyond that. We can’t see our bodies, they don’t exist. But the sensations do.

I don’t know how much time we spend like this, I can’t count the beats of our hearts for how fast they run, how loud mine resounds; I can’t count our breaths for how agitated they are.

Another kind of heat ignites in my chest. It’s a fire that pushes my heart to nearly burst and spreads to Zuko, whose skin is nearly physically burning. 

His hands let go of my breasts to move down my stomach, delicately tracing the stretch marks at my hips. They keep going and finally get to my thighs, scaling through their inner side.

This time I do moan, but we are too far gone to notice.

His fingers touch my lips. Softly. Too softly, too lightly. I want to moan again, this time out of frustration and eagerness. I want his touch to be harder. My hands finally move and flutter over his abs before reaching for his dick. (He’s hard, I could tell from before.)

We touch each other. He is hard and hot, I am hot and wet. His fingers massage my clit, mine pressure gently the tip of his cock.

It’s primal, we are breathing heavier, making inhuman noises. My whole body is on the verge of quivering; I have to hold on to Zuko’s hair with my other hand for steadying myself. My fists clench in it. He groans quietly, pleased. His scalding, humid breath crashes against my mouth. I’m seeing colors in the dark. We are ablaze.

We’re turning into an actual fire. I’m sweating, panting, being consumed into steam.

His other hand goes to my breast again and I tremble.

Force myself to stop.

Zuko does so, too.

We absorb each other’s heat from the cold air as my hand goes to his, entwine our fingers together. Freedom also has boundaries, just the ones that you choose for yourself.

Real freedom is all about choices, and remaining faithful to them. If Zuko and I continued, it would be too common. It wouldn’t be what I wanted to show him.

I feed myself from his dying warmth, feeling my own expand and pulse inside me like a second soul. _We are not broken when we are together_ , I think. We are wounded, and tired, and rough, but we are not broken.

His eyes are still glowing when we take off the blindfolds, like lasting lanterns into the sunrise.

And I love them.

Love _him_.

In any way, in any form, broken or mended, as long as I am water and moonshine, and he is fire and sunbeam; I’ll love him.

*******

**From Katara’s diary later that night:**

_Once upon a time, the sun fell in love with the moon, and the moon fell in love with the sun._

_Not at the same time, not in the same way, theirs were two separated love stories and were told as such._

_The sun became saddened for his loneliness, his flames destroyed and their light blinded, nothing could approach him, he was incorporeal annihilation. He thought of his glow as a curse, one that he should bear alone resenting himself and the rest of the universe for the tragedy of it. He only became enamored by the one being that could not reach for his fire but could reflect its brightness._

_It wasn’t a tact, it wasn’t even an acknowledgment, but it was a proof of existence. He was real, he could be touched and loved. He burnt brighter than ever, more out of arrogance than happiness. He could be seen – he had the right to be seen._

_The moon was a lost being in the vast space, cold and alone by choice. She didn’t know what to think of herself, she didn’t consider herself unpleasant, but perhaps her destiny was to be unimportant. Her luminous skin hidden in the dark only shone when it caught a share of foreign radiance. Was she destined to be a mirror?_

_An echo?_

_One day she caught an aggressive beam, which not only glowed but scorched and scarred. It was annoying, to say the least, and it came from impure feelings. She became angered. Anger made her bold._

_Coursing through her orbit, she finally found the source of such annoyance. The sun._

_She confronted him, he proclaimed his right to be seen._

_They spend numerous dusks and dawns this way. Angry with each other, alone together. Unexpectedly, boldness had grown into the moon, and for the first time, she felt radiant for and by herself, for the courage and strength she was willing to give to her persona._

_The sun was still unable to see his virtues, the moon couldn’t get to him._

_Their encounters grew from angry to sad and mildly pleased in two separate directions. The moon was sad for the sun’s self-doubt. The sun was pleased, for in one way or the other he could be seen. He deserved it._

_He craved it._

_The sun continued to burn, accidentally razing more than what he could handle. In reality, he wasn’t meant to be destruction, but guidance. A steady presence that – though unreal, dream-like – could illume the roads of others. Realizing this, the sun let go of his anger and arrogance, to grow friendly and open._

_His encounters with the moon turned eager and hesitant. The sun was keen to make amends, the moon had her reservations._

_Without his tainted feelings, the sun understood his fascination with the moon deeper. She came from the darkness yet, somehow, the dark hadn’t crept inside of her._

_The moon felt seen herself._

_Dusk and dawns turned colorful, bright, and cold shades blended._

_The sun and the moon were needed in different places at different times, but their short, meaningful meetings were no longer confrontations, they were sharing pieces of themselves. Learning. Understanding. Setting free. Trusting their loved one to come back at the end of the night._

_P.S. Sorry, diary, I know I haven’t written much ever since the war. Been busy! Sorry._

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed and would like to know ways to support me as a writer, please visit this post: https://heavensweetheart.tumblr.com/post/628563499111661568


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